


Double Blind

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Charlie Starts Shenanigans, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Non-Hunting AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:38:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5695090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie loves the Winchesters and owes them for setting her up with her girlfriend.  One of these days, she'll find the right people to pay them back with.</p><p>Rachel loves her cousin Castiel and his best friend Benny.  She wants nothing more than to see them happy.  So when her classmate Charlie asks her if she knows any cute gay men who might be interested in a blind date, she agrees immediately.</p><p>The board is set.  The pieces are in place.  Just how wrong could it go?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Blind

“Charlie, this is a bad idea,” Sam protested. “Double-blind is for scientific studies, not dates! You haven’t screened the date, you’re trusting a friend – and one who hasn’t even met me or Dean.”

Charlie’s enthusiasm didn’t dim a bit. Sam had known it wouldn’t. “Come on, it’ll be an adventure! What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He could be a crazy axe murderer,” Sam said.

“He’s Rachel’s friend,” Charlie said. “Do you really think Rachel has crazy axe murderers as friends?”

“No, but that’s exactly my point – I don’t know Rachel, so I don’t know who the hell she’s friends with,” Sam argued. “Aside from you, and no offense, but that’s not exactly reassuring.”

Charlie just laughed at him. “You are so paranoid. Look, even if he is a crazy axe murderer, it’s not like we’re introducing you and then leaving you there one-on-one. You know me and Dean and Pamela, and I _can_ personally testify that Rachel and her date are good people.”

“But not the guy you’re trying to set me up with. What _do_ you know about him?” Sam asked.

Charlie shrugged. “Just what Rachel’s told me – he’s her friend, and he’s shy, and he’s got a friend who we’re setting up with Dean.”

“Fine,” Sam said, surrendering to the inevitable. “I’m going to regret this, but if you can convince Dean, I’ll go.”

 

“Can’t believe we let Charlie talk us into this,” Dean grumbled as he adjusted the collar on his jacket. “What were we thinking?”

“It’s Charlie. She could talk anyone into anything just by being enthusiastic at them,” Sam said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Dean chuckled. “Yeah. I know.”

Charlie’s car pulled up then, followed closely by another. Charlie and her girlfriend Pamela got out, along with a tall man who looked mildly intimidating. Sam recognized Rachel, and the man holding her hand was probably her boyfriend Ezekiel. The other man who got out of their car had the bluest eyes Sam had ever seen and the expression of someone who’d gotten his arm twisted into doing something he really didn’t want to. Sam could sympathize.

Rachel led the two strange guys over to the Winchesters. “Dean, this is my cousin Castiel. Cas, meet Dean. And Sam, my friend Benny. Benny, Sam, Charlie’s friend.”

“Hi, Sam,” Benny said. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Sam said. Well, Benny didn’t seem like the axe-murdering type.

Dean turned on the charming smile. “Hey, Cas. Nice to meet you. Looking forward to this.”

“You are? Why?” Castiel asked, and Sam tried not to laugh. He noticed Benny doing the same thing.

Dean shrugged. “Well, Rachel and Charlie say you guys are cool. If you’re Rachel’s cousin…”

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Castiel said.

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Cas, be nice. You promised to behave yourself.”

“I promised to give this a chance despite having little faith in Charlie,” Cas corrected. This time, Sam and Benny’s eyes met and they quickly had to look away from each other before they laughed. “It can’t be a fair chance if I’m not being myself.”

“You should have some faith in me, the Winchesters are awesome guys,” Charlie said. “Benny, you have faith, don’t you?”

Benny shrugged. “I dunno. Willin’ to play along and see how things go, at least.”

“Enthusiastic,” Dean said. “I get it, though. Charlie had to do some major arm-twisting to get me and Sammy to come.”

“Well, good to know the two of you have some sense,” Benny said. “And not enough sense to not go along with crazy schemes cooked up by crazy friends.”

“Let’s go before it gets too crowded for us to make a big table,” Charlie said. She led the way into the bar, to a place where they could pull tables and chairs together.

“How do you guys know each other?” Sam asked once they were settled with drink orders in.

“Me and Cas were in the same class at the same high school,” Benny said. “Didn’t have much in common, me bein’ a dumbass jock and him being the smartest kid in our class and the weirdest. I was kinda a bully to him at first, but we kept getting thrown together so we ended up becoming friends in self-defense. He’s the only reason I got out of Purgatory.”

“Purgatory, huh?” Dean said. “High school felt a lot more like Hell to me.”

“Nah, Hell is eternal,” Benny said, but he was laughing. “Purgatory you eventually get paroled from, once you’ve burned off your sins.”

“I enjoyed high school,” Cas said. “I didn’t want to ever leave.”

“And now you know why Cas is in college and I’m workin’ construction,” Benny said, punching Cas’s shoulder.

Dean looked between them and asked, “There a reason the two of you aren’t together?”

Benny and Cas looked at each other. Benny shrugged. “Like I mentioned, at first we kinda didn’t get along, and by the time I got my head outta my ass about Cas and about likin’ boys, it was too late.”

“My actual brothers are jerks, and Benny became the brother I’d always wanted to have,” Cas said. “By the time I knew he liked guys, I thought of him as my brother, and he feels the same way. It would just be too weird, now.”

“I told my real brothers if I ever see ‘em again I’ll kill ‘em, after what they did to my high school girlfriend.” Benny stopped, clearly not wanting to talk about it. “Rachel said you two are brothers?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “No other family. Well, technically, Dad’s still alive, but we haven’t spoken to him in over four years.”

“Why not?” Cas asked.

“Me and Dad started butting heads when I was eleven. By the time I was sixteen, I’d gotten fed up enough to run away,” Sam said. “Dean and Dad tracked me down in Flagstaff, Arizona. Dean thought the plan was to knock a little sense into me and bring me home, but Dad beat the shit out of me.”

“To this day I’m still not sure whether Dad would’ve killed him, but I got in the way before he had the chance,” Dean said, taking up the story. “We ran again that night, to an old friend of Dad’s he’d had a falling out with but who’d always liked the two of us better anyway. Bobby made sure Dad couldn’t get us. Gave us a place to stay and made it possible for Sam to finish school. He’s in college, too. Full-ride scholarship to Stanford, two years into a history degree and planning on going to law school if he can get in.”

Benny let out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s really impressive, Sam.”

Sam ducked his head a little. It wasn’t that impressive. Cas was probably at Stanford, too. “What are you studying, Cas?”

“I’m premed and minoring in philosophy, also at Stanford, obviously,” Cas said. “I still haven’t decided if I want to actually go to medical school or get into social work. What do you do, Dean?”

“Auto mechanic,” Dean said. “Don’t know if you saw my car out there – a ’67 Impala that I got when I turned eighteen and have kept running and taken care of. It used to be my dad’s, only thing of his I kept.”

“Noticed that Impala when we drove in,” Benny said. “That yours? She’s a beaut.”

“Thanks,” Dean said. “Hard work and a lot of love.”

“If you’re a history major, then how did you meet Charlie?” Cas asked. “She’s computer science, which seems a little… antithetical.”

“We took the same writing class our first semester and kept getting into fights that disrupted our discussion sessions,” Sam said, and Charlie laughed. “When the class ended, I realized I was going to miss the fighting, so I asked her to come hang out sometime. Once I’d convinced her I wasn’t hitting on her, she agreed, and she and Dean bonded over the fact that you will not find bigger geeks anywhere.”

“Dean’s the one who introduced me and Pamela,” Charlie chimed in. “Been trying to return the favor ever since.”

“By setting him up with unknown friends of friends?” Cas asked, eyebrow raised. “I think I can tell you why your strategy hasn’t succeeded.”

“Oh, hush, you,” Charlie said. “Give Dean a chance, you’ll love him.”

 

On the way home, it was quiet. Dean was the one to break the silence. “Hey, you think you’re gonna call Benny?”

Sam shrugged. “We’ve got some common interests and he seems like a nice enough guy, but… I dunno. Something felt wrong. Wouldn’t mind hanging out and talking history or shooting pool, but I don’t see anything like Charlie intended happening there. What about you? You and Cas seemed to be having a great time.”

“Yeah, we did, but it’s like you said, it doesn’t feel right for more than friendship,” Dean said. “At least this one was better than when Charlie tried to hook us up with Brady and Gordon, huh?”

Sam laughed at that. Brady and Gordon… that group date had been a total disaster. By the end of the night, Sam was pretty sure that his date Brady wanted to kill him, and Dean’s date Gordon had called Sam the antichrist. “Dean? Why do we have so much trouble with this?”

“Because we keep listening to Charlie instead of finding our own people. That or because you are the world’s biggest nerd,” Dean said. “Why? Do you think we’re overthinking things, we should just call them and ignore the doubts?”

“Well, no, we shouldn’t ignore our instincts, if the spark’s not there you can’t force it,” Sam said. “It’s just… Cas and Benny seem like good guys, and I don’t want to…”

“Wait a minute,” Dean said, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face. “Sammy, are you crushing on Cas?”

“What? No!” Sam looked over at Dean and sighed. “Maybe. You said you’re not…”

“Nah, I figure when I spend more of a date lookin’ at the guy with you, I’m probably not all that into the guy I’m with,” Dean said, and Sam gave a relieved laugh. “I think there had to be a miscommunication somewhere, and Rachel and Charlie got our dates backwards.”

 

When they were dropped off, Cas let out a long breath. “That was nowhere near as bad as I expected. Give me your phone.”

Benny raised an eyebrow, but held the phone out. “Why?”

“So I can steal Sam’s number from you and give you Dean’s,” Cas said. “I don’t know why Rachel keeps setting me up with people who are more your type, especially in this case where Sam was right there to set me up with instead.”

“I know, right?” Benny said, taking his phone back. “If I wanted a guy like you, it would’ve occurred to me to hit on you before it became too weird. Think they agree?”

“Well, I didn’t want to make things awkward by calling him out on it, but I’m fairly certain Dean’s far more into you than me,” Cas said. “I was too busy trying not to get caught staring at Sam to try to figure out what he was thinking.”

 

When Sam’s phone rang, he checked the number. The caller ID was not at all what he expected. “Hello?”

“Hello, Sam,” Cas said. “I hope you don’t mind. I got your number from Benny.”

Sam chuckled. “Well, caller ID knew you, so I think Dean stole my phone to get Benny’s number and program yours into mine. So no, I don’t mind. What’s up?”

“Please understand that I mean no slight to your brother when I say this, he is a wonderful person and I hope we can be friends, but Rachel is an idiot who keeps insisting she knows better than I do what I’m looking for and getting it terribly wrong.”

“So you and Benny think the girls set things up backwards too?” Sam asked, not bothering to hide the giddiness.

“Yes. I blame Rachel entirely, not Charlie, this is not the first time she’s done this. It is the first time I was actually interested in Benny’s date, though. Benny doesn’t mind, as long as I allow him the same chance at Dean.”

“Oh, Charlie’s not exactly great at getting our types right either,” Sam said. “Remind me to tell you sometime about this guy Luke she thought was just _perfect_. Well, he was charming enough for a second date, but the second date proved that he was the boyfriend from Hell.”

“Just out of curiosity, would that be Luke Milton?” Cas asked.

Sam blinked and stared at his phone for a minute. “Yeah, actually. You know him?”

“Unfortunately,” Cas said. “Sam, please give me a chance anyway, but Luke Milton is my cousin. You’re right, he is charming, and he is the boyfriend from Hell. I’m nothing like him.”

Sam laughed. “Well, if you want to prove that, then I think we need to have a second date.”

“Which means, technically, that we need to have a first one,” Cas said. “When would be good for you?”

“Tonight if that’s not too soon or you aren’t already busy, because school makes doing anything during the week a pain this time of year,” Sam said. “I think I’m free Tuesday, but trying to make plans just guarantees that one of my professors will decide it’s time for a project or I’ll suddenly remember I have a study group scheduled.”

“I know that feeling. Tonight works for me. Should we invite Dean and Benny?”

“Nah, let them have their own date. Unless you’re worried I’m an axe murderer or something?”

“Not anymore,” Cas said. “Despite being Charlie’s friend.”

"You'll get used to Charlie, I swear, she wouldn't be friends with an axe murderer for long. If only because once she found out she'd go be perky at him and he'd give it up to go hug puppies or something. See you tonight."

**Author's Note:**

> When I started writing this, I thought it was going to be a nice, simple, run-of-the-mill "Sam and Cas get set up on a blind date and things work out" story. Then it became a double blind date with Benny and Dean so that Sam would be more comfortable meeting the potential crazy axe murderer, and then the whole "double blind" thing occurred to me, and the story got a little out of hand. I thought it was funny so I just let it go where it wanted to.
> 
> I love comments almost as much as I love Benny's accent!


End file.
